If we do not unite to stop this project, ALDOT will repeat the tragic mistakes of 50 years ago.

Interstate-20/59 cuts through downtown Birmingham. (File photo)

By Raymond A. Mohl

The Alabama Department of Transportation is moving quickly to put into place its plan to tear down and rebuild the Interstate-20/59 elevated expressway that bisects downtown Birmingham. ALDOT’s plan would not only rebuild the expressway higher and wider, but it would eliminate some downtown exit ramps and shift exiting traffic to 11th Avenue North. The state’s highway engineers developed this plan with little public input, ignoring any expressions of concern among Birmingham citizens. They have maintained a veil of secrecy about the project, as exemplified by a recent meeting with the Birmingham City Council that was closed to the public. They claim to have studied potential alternative routes, but will not publicly disclose specifics about those alternatives.

If we do not unite to stop this project, ALDOT will repeat the tragic mistakes of 50 years ago, when the Interstate plowed through downtown, short-circuiting economic development, walling off African Americans in northern neighborhoods from the city, and bringing unacceptable levels of air and noise pollution to the central city. In the 1960s state highway engineers had the power, money, expertise and professional prestige to build roads wherever they wanted. The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 authorized and funded the building of the Interstate Highway System that linked the nation’s big cities, but also cut through their centers. Across the country, city officials, planners and businessmen embraced the expressway dream in hopes of reviving struggling downtowns as city people moved to the suburbs. The federal government provided 90 percent of the cost; the states contributed only 10 percent but had authority to select Interstate corridors. In Southern cities like Birmingham, this left road-building susceptible to racial decision-making. According to planning historian Charles E. Connerly’s excellent book, The Most Segregated City in America -- City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980 (University of Virginia Press, 2005), racial considerations dictated the city’s entire downtown expressway system.

Now, 50 years after interstates construction began, the system’s aging bridges and roadways need not just patchwork repair but replacement. Failing infrastructure has provided other cities across the nation with the opportunity to correct the big mistakes of the past. Some cities are tearing down unappealing, environmentally damaging and dangerous elevated expressways such as the one that slices through Birmingham. A decade ago, Milwaukee demolished its Park East Freeway, opening up a wide swath of urban space for commercial, residential and cultural redevelopment. In Seattle, the aging, elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct is coming down; a surface boulevard will reconnect Seattle’s citizens with the city’s waterfront and expressway traffic will be diverted to a deep-bore tunnel beneath the central city. In post-Katrina New Orleans, local planners advanced a plan to tear down the Interstate-10 expressway through the black Treme community, aiming to restore the Claiborne Avenue boulevard destroyed by highway building in the 1960s. In Nashville politicians and planners produced a long-range city plan that would tear down or rip up eight miles of inner-city expressway segments in an effort to redevelop the central city and restore vitality to Nashville’s civic life.

This kind of positive development can happen here. Birmingham has a unique opportunity right now to correct the disastrous errors made by state highway engineers and supportive city officials. Some city organizations have already identified an abandoned industrial corridor in North Birmingham that would be an ideal location for the expressway. The existing 20/59 roadbed could be turned into a surface street similar to University Boulevard. The downtown street grid would be reconnected. Decades after being isolated by racist policy decisions, North Birmingham communities would be reunited with the city, with the potential for extensive commercial revitalization. Redevelopment downtown and around the convention center and the hotel district would thrive. The new expressway corridor to the north would also experience development over time, perhaps for research and office parks or light industry. The experience of other cities such as Milwaukee could serve as a model for Birmingham. Along with the Railroad Park, the new Barons stadium and other redevelopment advances, a freeway teardown and relocation would enhance Birmingham’s already growing reputation as an “All America City.” ALDOT’s plan to tear down and rebuild I-20/59 is expected to cost $330 million, but a teardown and relocation as a surface highway in an unpopulated and undeveloped corridor would almost certainly be much less expensive. It would also avoid the anticipated two or more years of through traffic detoured onto I-65 and I-459 during the expressway rebuild.

An expressway teardown and relocation will not be easily achieved. ALDOT will fight any change to the current plan to rebuild in place. It will take a lot of support from city officials, especially Mayor William Bell, and the involvement of powerful local business interests and aroused community groups to make it happen. Federal highway officials in the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration should to be alerted to the needs and desires of the city and its citizens. In past freeway revolts, litigation was effective in holding up the highway men and achieving desirable outcomes. Positive things could happen, but Birmingham and its citizens need to wake up to the reality of what ALDOT has planned for us and get moving on creating an alternative future based on civic pride and respect for urban life.

Raymond A. Mohl, Ph.D., is distinguished professor of history at UAB. He is co-author of the recent book, "Interstate: Highway Politics and Policy since 1939" (University of Tennessee Press, 2012). Email: rmohl@uab.edu

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